At the Closing Night Ceremony on April 20th, 7 pm, at the New York Directors Guild Theatre, Distancia / Distance by Sergio Ramirez (Guatemala) won the Havana Star Prize for Best Picture and Best Director while the Best Screenplay prize went to Jualiana Rojas and Marco Dutra for Trabalhar Cansa / Hard Labor (Brazil) in the Fiction competition, as voted by the jury members: Esmeralda Santiago, Angel Lara and Jairo Carrillo. Con mi corazón en Yambo / With My Heart in Yambo (Ecuador) by Maria Fer...

The 12th annual Havana Film Festival New York (HFFNY) opens April 7-15 with a program of award-winning films, panel discussions, and Q&A sessions with distinguished international directors, actors, and producers. HFFNY's Cuban films are part of ¡Sí Cuba! Festival, a city-wide celebration of Cuban arts and culture. 14 New York institutions convene to celebrate the rich artistic vitality of Cuba by showcasing the diversity of Cuban culture from the traditional to the modern. ...

Jointly presented with Havana, Cuba's International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the Havana Film Festival New York is close, but no cigar. Subways and skyscrapers just can't match that fallen Habanero elegance as a habitat for Latino cinema. But if Cuba isn't on your itinerary and Manhattan is, you could do worse than to savor a week of Big Apple screenings from and about Latin America and the Caribbean, and about Latinos in the U.S. Opening Night w...